The OPEN Government Act of 2007 made some changes in
FIOA. It defined and clarified who is a member of the
News Media. It provided for recovery of attorney fees
and litigation costs and set time limits for the agencies to
work within.

DOL FOIA Portal

You can now track the status of your FOIA request on
DOL's
FOIA Portal, however it only goes back 90 days.

FOIA online

FOIAonline allows you to submit FOIA requests to all
participating agencies from this website, track the status
of requests, search for requests submitted by others, and
generate up-to-the-minute reports on FOIA processing.
Agencies currently using FOIAonline are: Environmental
Protection Agency, Department of Commerce (except the US
Patent and Trademark Office), Office of General Counsel of
the National Archives and Records Administration, Merit
Systems Protection Board, Federal Labor Relations Authority,
and the Department of the Treasury's Departmental Offices,
Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Bureau of
Engraving and Printing, Bureau of the Fiscal Service,
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and United
States Mint.

Why aren't Department of Labor, Department of
Energy and NIOSH using this service?

Federal FOIA Ombudsman

EECAP FOIAs

EECAP has made many FOIA requests since 2005 and received
much of the information you find on these pages through
FOIAs from DOE, NIOSH, and DOL. DOE and NIOSH provide
FOIA information to EECAP without charge and on July 13,
2010
NIOSH issued a statement that they would waive fees for
all requesters who act as advocates for nuclear workers. On
September 27, 2011 DOL began requesting prohibitively high
fees to EECAP for FOIA information. September 11
coincidentally was the same day the Associated Press ran a
national story which was very embarrassing to DEEOIC, based
on an EECAP FOIA request.

DOL is also requiring prohibitively high fees from ANWAG
and Cold War Patriots, which prevents these non-profits from
obtaining needed information.

To see the FOIAs that EECAP has received, please to
the
FOIA Archive page, which
is a work in progress.

FOIAs at a Glance

To help understand how Federal Agencies' FOIA requests
are being handled I have color coded the following FOIAs:

July 14, 2016
DOL denied EECAP's request for some of the information
requested and denied the fee waiver request for a list of
all EEOICPA providers who have been removed from the program
and requested $320 to provide the names and asked if EECAP
wanted to amend the FOIA request.

July 24, 2016
EECAP amended the FOIA request to eliminate current
investigations and ask for information on medical providers
as well as home health agencies.

January 30, 2014--EECAP requested a copy of the policy
or any written discussion/phone notes discussing the
restriction of the NIOSH Ombudsman from discussion SEC
petition issues with NIOSH Board members and their
contractor.

February 18, 2014--DOL
responded with tracking number 740433.March 11, 2014--After a phone call with DEEOIC personnel
EECAP withdrew this FOIA request. DEEOIC
explained that a printout of all ECS fields would give no
usable information as the fields had no names and only used
code numbers.

2013 FOIA Request 2: DOL Request for combined year
end statistics for EEOICPA for 2005-2010

Branch of Outreach & Technical Assistance sent a letter acknowledging EECAP's March 22
letter which seems to confuse the February 5th FIOA request
for EEOICA combined statistics with the earlier November
2012 FOIA request for states EEOICPA statistics and asking
for another copy of the publication contract.

April 10, 2013--DOL sent a

letter administratively closing the FOIA request This
letter seems to confuse the February 5th FIOA request for
EEOICA combined statistics with the earlier November 2012
FOIA request for states EEOICPA statistics
This letter did not acknowledge receiving or
discuss the contents of either of the January 15th or March
22nd letters EECAP sent. This letter was mailed in the
same envelope as the letter above it.

NIOSH
responded with 10 pages of emails. Some
information was withheld under Exemption 2, which allows "pre-decisional
information" to be withheld, but NIOSH did not say how many
pages were withheld, although their letter states 60 pages
were withheld in total.

DOL
sent a letter stating that they would ASK QTC if they
would be willing to disclose the information requested.

August 8, 2013--

DOL
responded with a denial to release the CMC manual and
training materials to EECAP based on Exemption 4 which
protects "trade secrets and commercial or financial
information obtained from a person (that is) privileged or
confidential".

January 24,
2014--DEEOIC made a phone call to discuss this FOIA request.
DEEOIC again stated they material was not eligible for FOIA
release. EECAP politely disagreed. DEEOIC agreed
to look into the releasability of the guidance/directions
given to ACS to produce the training materials.

DOL
responded denying EECAP's request for a fee waiver and
requesting $1,920 for the material requested despite the
fact that they were well outside of the time allowed to
respond to the request. They also assigned tracking
number 723726.

December 16, 2013 EECAP requested the FOIA
Ombudsman Office assistance in obtaining this information
because DEEOIC missed the deadline required.

October 29, 2013--DOL
acknowledged EECAP's request and assigned FOIA tracking
number 727697. In the letter they said they had no
reports, emails, phone call notes, or meeting notes
discussing the cost of the IOM report.

DOE
responded that the contract would not be released and
claimed that release would disclose "trade secrets and
commercial or financial information obtained fro a person
that is privileged or confidential".

2013 FOIA Request 22: DOE Documents
from the Manhattan District History (HQ-2014-00137-F)

October 26, 2013--EECAP requested copies of documents
not available online from the Manhattan District History.

2012 FOIA Request 9: DOL-DEEOIC
Emails

2012 FOIA Request 10: DOL-DEEOIC
Teleconference Notes

November 14, 2012--

DOL denied ANWAG's request for copies of Teleconference Notes
under Exception 5, stating that they were "pre-decisional deliberative process
privilege" despite evidence that they had been used to evaluate claims.

2012 FOIA Request 11: DOL-OWCP Actuarial Tables

November 15, 2012--EECAP requested a copy of the
OWCP 2011 actuarial study.

November 20, 2012--

OWCP
responded that they had received the request and EECAP
could expect a response within 20 days.

EECAP received the Actuarial study within the 20 day
period.

2012 FOIA Request 12: DOL-DEEOIC Year End State Statistics
for 2007-2011

DOL
responded denying fee waiver request because EECAP did not send a copy of a
contract for publication of the article to be written and quoted cost to provide
information of $5,920 for information within its database.

letter administratively closing the FOIA request because
they say EECAP did not respond to their January 8th letter.
This most current letter did not acknowledge receiving or
discuss the contents of either of the January 15th or March
22nd letters EECAP sent.

2011 FOIA Request 4: DOE Mound Laboratory Notebooks

DOE
responds that they have found the files but they need to
be reviewed before they are released.

EECAP received two large boxes of Mound Laboratory
Notebooks from DOE.

2011 FOIA Request 5: DOL-DEEOIC EEOICPA Statistics

August 19, 2011--

EECAP
requested EEOICPA statistics. The FOIA kindly
office called to discuss the request and helped EECAP reduce
the amount of information requested. EECAP was told
that the information requested after this adjustment would
be quick and easy to get. EECAP uses contemporary data
to power its interactive maps and wished to use the
statistics to evaluate the historic payment rates of
EEOICPA.

September 13, 2011--

DEEOIC
responded with a letter that sounded like the
information would be provided.

September 27, 2011--

DEEOIC
responded by requesting $680 for the statistics
requested and did not address the request for a fee waiver.
September 27 is also the day the Freddy Krueger story broke
in the national news.

EECAP
filed a new FOIA statistics request. So much time
had passed since the original FOIA request that the original
data requested would not be useful. After discussing
the matter with a DOL employee, EECAP decided to file a new
FOIA request for statistics using different dates.

DOL
responds with tracking number 671831 and a request to
clarify what "all teleconference memos, including but not
limited to, questions and answers regarding all references
pertaining to Chronic Beryllium Disease, submitted from
January 1, 2011 to January 18, 2012" means.

EECAP made FOIA request for
copies of DMC, IH, and Toxicologist reports from December 1, 2010 to November
30, 2011 for the Cleveland District Office and requested a fee waiver for the
information. DEEOIC uses these reports as very important pieces of
evidence in adjudicating claims. EECAP requested this information to share
with the public and to analyze for consistency and validity.

December 20, 2011--

DEEOIC denied the fee waiver
request and requested $4,560 to
provide the reports. DEEOIC also requested clarification of
the time period which EECAP had stated as "All".

January 17, 2012--

EECAP replied to DEEOIC,
defined the term "All" and provided additional justification for the granting of
a fee waiver, and requested metrics on the standards used to determine fee
waivers.

April 3, 2012--

DEEOIC replied that EECAP still
did not meet the standard for granting of a fee waiver and quoted an alternative
method of obtaining the information for $20,000.

2011 FOIA
Request 10: DOL-DEEOIC-District Medical Consultant Reports

December 20, 2011--DOL
denied ANWAG's fee waiver request and requested $12,560 to provide
them with copies of Jacksonville District Office's District Medical Consultant
reports from December 1, 2010-November 30, 2011.

DEEOIC
responded and provided EECAP with the entire Claims
Examiner (23 chapters) Training Manual at no charge.
The training manual referred to claimants and their doctors
with names like Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lechter.

DOL
responds to ANWAG that DOL is consolidating ANWAG's most
current FOIA requests. DOL also says that they
consider ANWAG to be a commercial use requester and if a fee
waiver is requested ANWAG needs to provide additional
information.

March 27, 2009--

ANWAG
responded to DOL as requested on why ANWAG should not be
considered a commercial use requester, why the FOIA requests
should not be aggregated, and that DOL should consider a fee
waiver.

May 5, 2009--

DOL
responded to ANWAG denying a fee waiver because ANWAG
did not state how providing the information would contribute
to the public understanding of government operations,
quoting from a 1987 memo. SOL went on to quote from a
1984 case (Crooker v. Dept. of Army) on how a fee waiver was
unwarranted because "information of interest to a small
segment of the scientific community" would not "benefit the
public at large". The aggregation was allowed because
the records requested were similar and the FOIA requests
were received within the same week.

May 19, 2009--ANWAG filed an appeal.

February 26, 2010--DOL's Officer of the Solicitor
decided ANWAG's appeal in favor of DOL.

July 20, 2010--DEEOIC received the FOIA appeals
decision.

August 6, 2010--

DOL
sent ANWAG a letter on her March 2, 2009 FIOA request
which aggregated 4 FOIA requests together including:
(1)communications on Ruttenber Database for Rocky Flats,
(2)all correspondence regarding neutron radiation scientific
literature at Rocky Flats, (3)DOL's Branch of Outreach
& Technical Assistance response to 1 & 2, and (4) all
communications regarding ANWAG from 2004 to present.
DOL also requested to know if ANWAG wanted to proceed with
the FOIA and that the request would be considered "unusual
circumstances" and not be ready within 20 days.